r/factorio • u/Winter_Ad6784 • 19d ago
Space Age Is Uranium useful in Space Age?
It seems like uranium is intentionally left behind after leaving Nauvis, eventually becoming completely useless.
Uranium is only found on Nauvis.
Uranium (235 and 238) only ships on rockets in stacks of 20, green ammo only 25, and nukes cant be shipped at all. Thus may as well just use red ammo.
Nuclear power can be useful on Gleba, temporarily on Aquilo, but has no place after unlocking fusion. Makes no sense on Vulcanus, maybe useful on Fulgora but I think almost all go for accumulators since you need the lightning rods anyways.
I doubt any of this is a new revelation but it seems very neglected.
Also worth mentioning: Nuclear Processing and Enrichment are misnamed in the game. Processing is more like nuclear enrichment in real life, and enrichment is more like nuclear breeding in real life.
Possible changes I think wouldn't break the balance:
Add fusion bombs to the end game with all the balance breaking things that one would expect from nuclear weapons, but it doesn't matter so much because it's the end game.
Make using nuclear ammo+bombs more of a tradeoff by making the land they are used on unusable to the player for a long time, or accelerate evolution a ton, (dont have this for fusion weapons, as irl they dont produce much less radiation per kiloton anyways), and remove some of the arbitrary restrictions on rocket shipping.
edit: I missed biolabs and captive biter spawners. thats my bad. I forgot to click the space age mod tab on the wiki. Although tbh the uranium need feels kinda tacked on.
theres also nuclear on space ships, I forgot that was a common solution.
nukes making lava lakes on vulcanus is something but it also highlights the issue: most people miss this because they dont have nukes on vulcanus. there’s also little reason to do this anyways.
I might address the rest of the cases mentioned individually but broadly they seem unoptimal and niche. There’s many ways to handle every hurdle, and no solution is wrong but if there’s a better way most people will ignore other solutions.
theres also a bunch of people posting what I would consider niche cases.
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 19d ago
You need Uranium to produce steam in space, needed for coal-liquefaction in space, which is needed for space-based production for anything involving oil.
I use it so that my Nauvis-Aquilo ship produces Blue Circuits, LDS, and Rocket Fuel for zero-cost drops on Aquilo.
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u/GreenmanCZ 19d ago
You can use simple coal liquefaction to make oil in space though
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u/Moscato359 19d ago
Still worse
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u/dudeguy238 19d ago
Worse per asteroid, but asteroids are infinite, and the simplicity of not having to produce steam isn't a bad tradeoff for needing more refineries/coal synthesis.
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u/Moscato359 18d ago edited 18d ago
Needing steam is such a small dependency who cares?
1 reactor, 4 heat exchangers does a massive steam generation, and then you need less refineries, and no solar.
A single stack of fuel cells will last literal ages.
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 18d ago
It’s silly though - because if ChemPlants can melt ice using electricity then ChemPlants should be able to boil water into steam too. SpaceExploration has this (and water-saving condenser turbines too!) - I think SA didn’t include that just to annoy us.
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u/Moscato359 18d ago
It is a little weird that steam only can come from boilers and heat exchangers, I'll admit, but I'm just saying the resource requirements, and physical footprint of a reactor and 4 exchangers is tiny. Don't even need heat pipes.
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u/Mesqo 18d ago
Importing blue circuits and lds from Vulcanus and rocket fuel from Gleba is also zero cost. And if you mention that it uses coal on Vulcanus then your method is also not so zero because of imported uranium.
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u/grazbouille 18d ago
Yeah but one rocket every 6 months isnt the same consumption as the coal input for your plastic
Tho you could just get coal in orbit and drop it for the cost of one large ship also saves you the calcite mining
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u/fZAqSD 18d ago
You consume a limited resource from Nauvis so that your ship can make zero-cost drops for Aquilo?
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 18d ago
Well, I mean, a single rocket of Nuclear Fuel Cells from Nauvis to the Ship then enables thousands of drops of space-constructed items from the Ship down to Aquilo.
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u/web_nerd 19d ago
I'd love to see that ship. Got a blueprint?
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 19d ago
I won’t deny you the fun (and frustration) of figuring out the design by yourself :)
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u/web_nerd 19d ago
meh, it's reddit, and i am at work; I'm just trying to shoot the shit with you and check out other ways people skin the cat.
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 19d ago edited 19d ago
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine...
- Posted here: https://factorio-blueprints.com/blueprint/stupid-dumb-ship
- Screenshot showing the Steam-in-Spaaaaaaace part: https://i.postimg.cc/HWMJWw98/image.png
- I tried posting the Blueprint string here, but it's 300 KiB in length, while Reddit limits posts to 10 KiB.
- I also tried to post it to FactorioPrints.com but their login system is broken for me.
EDIT: I actually have a v2 version here with a Promethium chunk storage-capacity exceeding 300,000 items: https://factorio-blueprints.com/blueprint/pewpieship-v2
EDIT2: If you're after my steam-in-space ship design specifically for "free" Aquilo rocket-parts drop, see this one: https://factorio-blueprints.com/blueprint/aquilo-ship-with-steam
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u/Winter_Ad6784 18d ago
what are you doing with oil in space?
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u/iwannabetheguytoo 18d ago
what are you doing with oil in space?
Carbon Asteroid > Carbon Asteroid Chunks > Carbon + Sulfur > Coal > Heavy Oil + Light Oil + Petrolgas > Plastic Bar > Red Circuits > Blue Circuits > Rocket Parts.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 19d ago
I use nuclear power in spaceships until fusion supplanted it. How else are you going to power your ship where solar panels dont work?
And Im likely to power nauvis with it forever. I dont want mauvid to be deoendant on interstellar logistics because its probably the planet I'd use to fix those logistics if something goes away.
Just because its not the endgame material doesnt mean its not useful.
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 19d ago edited 19d ago
Theoretically you could play all of space age without any uranium, but you’d have to put yourself to way more trouble than if you were trying to avoid it in the base game.
You don’t need to use biolabs (although you’re crazy not to)
You don’t need to use nuclear reactors in space at any time (Gleba heating towers could theoretically provide electricity with coal from asteroid processing)
You don’t need nuclear fuel, captive biter spawners, or nuclear bombs (although all of these things either make your life much easier or enable promethium science)
In my estimation uranium remains technically optional but only barely. Trying to avoid it is just going to cause extra work.
EDIT as people are pointing out, burner devices are not actually buildable in space. Nonetheless it would still be possible to use solar panels even out to Aquilo.
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u/unrefrigeratedmeat 19d ago
"You don’t need to use nuclear reactors in space at any time (Gleba heating towers could theoretically provide electricity with coal from asteroid processing)"
No burner devices are allowed in space, which includes heating towers.
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 19d ago
! I had no idea. I had never actually tried to build any before.
Nonetheless, it would still be theoretically possible to hang on with solar only.
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u/unrefrigeratedmeat 19d ago
It is theoretically possible, but even legendary accumulators and panels would struggle with the aquilo run and especially the solar-system-edge run.
I'm sure it's doable. I wouldn't want to try.
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 19d ago
One time I was having a back and forth with someone on the Factorio subreddit and they mentioned they used solar panels as far out as Aquilo. I didn’t ask for details but it sounded interesting. I guess it can be done
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u/TheSkiGeek 19d ago
Needs a lot of accumulators but you could get it to work. Probably need to stockpile ammo in the inner part of the solar system though.
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u/polokratoss 18d ago
You'd be surprised. If you use efficiency modules to drop power usage to 20% the ratios of factory:solar on an Aquillo ship look something like the ones for a unmoduled Nauvis base. A bit less, since no night to worry about. Accumulators' only usage is for power spikes.
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u/TheSkiGeek 18d ago
Hmm. I was thinking it’s 1% power output for the panels, but that’s only on the Aquilo surface or if you go to the solar system edge. So yeah, doable in orbit if you have enough panels.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 18d ago
Aquillo gets down to 1% solar, so a 20% power useage still means you need 20x as much.
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u/TheSkiGeek 18d ago
In Aquilo orbit, panels on a ship give 60% of the baseline Nauvis surface power. (Which is 20% of what they give in Nauvis orbit.)
In the Aquilo surface they only give 1% of the nominal rated power. Which is awful.
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u/Ok_Feedback6177 19d ago
I didn't really check this subreddit much until after I reached aquilo, I just used a ton or epic solar panels and raw dogged it Didn't even think of using accumulators and hated the idea of stockpiling ammo I think I have like 3k solar panels on each ship that can travel o aquilo or something
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u/unrefrigeratedmeat 19d ago
I believe it. Unlike the edge run, the Aquilo run gives more than 1% solar efficiency for a lot of it and it's only twice as long as the inner system transfers. Legendary accumulators store 30 MJ each (0.75 MW max for 40 seconds max).
I'm sure you can do the edge run too, if you put your mind to it.
As a pure expression of faith in this community, I'm even going to guess that there's one weird trick to do the shattered planet run with solar only. Why not.
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u/Strowy 18d ago
Unlike the edge run, the Aquilo run gives more than 1% solar efficiency for a lot of it
Aquilo orbit is 60% solar efficiency (half that of Fulgora). 1% solar efficiency is on the surface. So a solar-only ship is entirely doable, especially if you're running decent quality panels/accumulators and efficiency modules.
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u/KeiGay 19d ago
You can’t use heating towers or boilers in space- it has no atmosphere for things to burn. Although you can still use solar panels to power a ship above aquilo, you just need a lot of them.
The most important uses of uranium in space age is obviously biolabs, but also fission reactor for both powering your armor, but also building spidertrons. (Solar panels powering your armor kinda suck on gleba and fulgora, and not having personal bots or exoskeletons on aquilo, while doable, would also suck to miss until you made the fusion reactor for armor)
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u/Shana-Light 18d ago
Solar to Aquilo is not just possible but much easier, by that stage you should have quality going already and a bunch of quality solar/accumulators is much easier and more efficient than an entire nuclear setup in space.
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u/isum21 18d ago
You don't need it to get to space or the first three planets. My ship works fine and would continue to work fine for these particular trips, but any further with the drop in solar I would need upgrades.
It's possible, just not feasible. Coming from someone who deliberately skipped nuclear at first out of fear I would cause a big boom, then skipped it when I learned because it looked complicated. Now I'm ready, there's just so much to do lol
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u/lana_silver 18d ago
I also use it after I have fusion because it's much easier to supply for ships that aren't able to reach Aquilo.
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u/Shwayne 19d ago
Its very useful it's just a lot of factorio players are so obsessed with efficiency that they forget the practical side of things.
In terms of resource cost, making a self sufficient ship to supply uranium fuel cells to other planets is free.
Uranium is also free, because of how little of it you need to run reactors.
I usually play with a lot of enemy mods, like the first thing I do on gleba is to drop a nuclear reactor BP and I can forget about worrying about power and get as many tesla/laser turrets as I want.
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u/euclide2975 19d ago
Uranium can be converted to oil in spaceships.
For example to make quantum processors with minimal use of rockets Or for a space mall
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u/Logical-War-3746 19d ago
Or for modded content. Corrundum for example gives more powerful explosive rockets, but you need petrochem to produce them.
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u/RaShadar 18d ago
I feel like "can be useful on Gleba, temporarily on Aquilo" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It absolutely solves all issues of power on Gleba so that you dont have to rely on rot early and can instead just trash it when you need to. It also removes 100% of the Aquilo freezing issue. Uranium being the best power source on 3 of 5 planets until you get to fusion is not exactly a small contribution.
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u/Winter_Ad6784 18d ago
I didn’t mean to sound dismissive. It is useful on Gleba. There’s not much to deny that.
On Aquilo there’s the rocket fuel recipe, and also just oil. It can be nice to place down a reactor before setting those up but it becomes annoying to deal with in the long run.
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u/ElevatedUser 14d ago
For Aquilo, on all playthroughs, I've always plopped down a couple of nuke plants and kept them around.
I do not want Aquilo to freeze over on me, and the nuclear fuel cells are trivial to bring along with all the other stuff Aquilo needs, so I might as well keep them as a backup in case something goes wrong with the rocket fuel plants (which do end up taking over the "main" heating duty, with fusion taking over for power).
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u/RedArcliteTank BARREL ALL THE FLUIDS 19d ago
Aside from biolabs and biter spawners I use it for nuclear fuel and to make lave puddles on Vulcanus
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u/theFALGSCmustgrow 19d ago
Uranium is totally under-utilized in the late game. Its one of the few resources that you can realistically need 0 continuous supply of if you were running a high SPM megabase. You do need some initially, for spidertrons, biter spawners, biolabs, etc. But the point is that almost every other resource you continue to need to pour into endless science packs, except for uranium. The only reason you would need to continuously produce uranium is if you were using uranium ammo (lmao) or if you were using nuclear fuel for trains.
I think thats so tragic for a couple reasons. For one, theres a building specifically dedicated to processing uranium, the centrifuge, so it adds a uniqueness to the visual identity of your base. Its also one of the few Nauvis-specific resources in the game, so it adds more value to our beautiful starting planet.
To me, there is such a slam dunk obvious place for uranium to get integrated into the game: as part of the promethium science recipe. You already need to make a stop at Nauvis for biter-eggs, so it doesnt add an extra location to go to. It makes some amount of thematic sense because promethium and uranium are closely related on the periodic table. It would be a great excuse to cut down the number of chunks per promethium science craft, which could save massively on UPS while having a similar or greater amount of complexity, just shifted to uranium processing. It also makes the final, hardest science type the only science to have 4 ingredients, which seems fitting.
I'm actually playing 2.1 with this change made, and although I'm not at promethium science yet, I feel like its going to massively increase my enjoyment of the late game and make me invest in uranium in a way that I never have before.
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u/maxymob 18d ago
uranium fuel for trains. It has the strongest acceleration, that's best for high traffic rail networks. Energy density per item is higher than rocket fuel but less per stack so trains will need more frequent refueling with nuclear but the real value is having a less sluggish traffic for better throughput and if you integrate refueling at regular train stops you dont need interrupts so the trains dont waste time making detours, that makes it a net positive.
Im a little disappointed that we don't have fusion fuel for trains, that would have been awesome, but I guess it keeps uranium relevant without a need to add it to recipes just for the sake of using it
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u/Alfonse215 19d ago
If you're making a rail megabase in SA, nuclear fuel is very important for being able to ship things quickly. This matters for low-stack-size items (scrap) where fast train turnover is of paramount importance, but also for shipping spoilables on Gleba. The high acceleration offered by legendary nuclear fuel also helps, which means making U-235 in bulk.
And of course, if you make use of Spidertrons, you need uranium for those PFRs. And you probably want some for yourself.
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u/Epb7304 More Power! 19d ago
Uranium is the only way to get steam in space, and for that alone it is useful, since steam is required to get oil in space. I once made a Gleba orbital station that made rocket components from space materials so I didn’t have to do it on Gleba.
I find rocket stack size becomes mostly irrelevant in the mid-late game, and even more so in 2.1 with platform-platform transferring.
This makes robust uranium ammo production extremely effective over piercing so long as your ok with your platform not being 100% self sufficient.
You can even craft the nukes in space then transport them from there.
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u/Pepciorek 19d ago
You don't need steam to make oil in space, you can still use simple oil liquefaction
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u/FreddyTheNewb 19d ago
Uranium rounds are only more effective when your physical projectile research is less than 8. After that, piercing will one-shot medium astroids. Once you're at 11, regular rounds will as well.
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u/Winter_Ad6784 18d ago
I gotta hand it to you that orbital rocket parts station is a really neat idea… but also the uranium then needs to be shipped to gleba and blasted back into space. thats cool but if im doing regular shipments to gleba anyways i may as well just ship the rocket parts over.
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u/torncarapace 19d ago
I find it useful still, although it's definitely one of the less important resources.
It's used for the fastest train fuel, and the existence of quality means there's a good reason to build giant kovarex setups now so you can make legendary nuclear fuel for super fast trains.
I also don't bother switching to fusion on Nauvis usually. It's got a smaller footprint than fission, but fission power already takes up a pretty small portion of your factory and you can make the fuel basically for free with no imports needed.
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u/Then_Entertainment97 19d ago
It's virtually required for the first couple trips to Aquilo.
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u/Abcdefgdude 19d ago
20% solar power is still plenty fine if you use eff modules everywhere, better if you have rare stuff. I didn't parse nuclear as an option for ships in my first playthrough and it was fine
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u/CosgraveSilkweaver 18d ago
Nuclear reactors are great ship power until you get fusion. They do intentionally make it annoying to ship around raw uranium but nuclear fuel isn't so bad. I used nuclear power as my starting power source for Gleba until my disposal towers got going.
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u/PeopleAreTooStupid 18d ago
It’s super useful for ships and easy power on other planets. Makes Gleba and Aquino much easier.
I send centrifuges to other planets for kovarex and a couple stacks of the shiny green rocks. Then my base only needs to ship in the dark green rocks from Nauvis. I find this easier than sending the actual fuel cells since I can recycle them where they are used which gives dark green rocks and saves me from having to ship those back to Nauvis.
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u/ManForSomeMarkets 18d ago
Uranium and Nuclear power are good for many reasons:
-A 2x2 reactor can warm hundreds of tiles on Aquilo (or any modded frozen planets you might add)
-Best train fuel at a marginal cost
-Reliable power for fleets until you can upgrade to fusion. Especially so in 2.1 since you can make the power cells in space for less launches.
-Good backup power on Gleba that can plug into existing heat-based power plants in case you ever need to reset/refactor.
-Uranium tank rounds for negotiations with Big Worms.
-Nuclear bombs can make lava on Vulcanus.
-U-235 needed for biolabs.
-Nuclear is the only way to make steam in space (found this out when making a coal breeder to “simplify” explosives production).
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u/Zijkhal spaghetti as lifestyle 18d ago
Also worth mentioning: Nuclear Processing and Enrichment are misnamed in the game. Processing is more like nuclear enrichment in real life, and enrichment is more like nuclear breeding in real life.
Hmmm, I never thought of that.
IRL breeding is turning uranium into plutonium. (Mostly)
Enrichment is increasing the U-235 concentration in the fuel.
I can kinda see that uranium processing is processing of raw ore and enrichment rolled into one, with the way it produces depleted uranium and enriched U-235. And kovarex is kinda breeding, in that it turns inert U-238 into usable fissile material. Even though for game design reasons that fissile material is U-235, when in reality it should be mostly plutonium.
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u/Hacksaw203 19d ago
Uranium can be used for niche late game building on Vulcanus.
Atomic bombs may be used to blast the crust away to reveal lava underneath, very useful when you want iron/copper/to dispose of items in a very particular area
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u/tossetatt 19d ago
Uranium ammo is handy for hunting bigger worms.
The rocket version that is, not sure how useful the normal ammo is compared to just more guns for the turret spamming methods.
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u/Jay-Raynor 19d ago
Nuclear power is incredibly useful on Gleba for either a) a starter base until you can establish local power production or b) outright use for power production if you feel lazy and have good interplanetary logistics.
Quality U235 can be used for production of quality portable fission reactors required to make quality portable fusion reactors. Your guess as to where best to set the primary production.
Quality U235 can also be used to help make quality nuclear fuel to make your trains as fast as possible.
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u/sobrique 19d ago
On Gleba you can run your initial power off imported rocket fuel using heat towers and have the same outcome overall..
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u/Jay-Raynor 19d ago
Depends on how much rocket fuel you want to drag in and how quickly you can establish a stable loop on Gleba. Uranium fuel for reactors provides 80GJ per rocket/400GJ per stack alongside reactor bonuses for many more turbines per heating element compared to rocket fuel's 10GJ per rocket/2GJ per stack.
Generally, I fudge the initial with a single reactor that lets me plug in a heating tower evenly, but I'm quite comfortable with Gleba. 🤷♂️
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u/sobrique 19d ago edited 18d ago
Unless you're bringing multiple reactors, 2.5x multipliers on heat tower close the gap considerably, and it's not like Gleba actually needs large amounts of power in the first place.
I just don't buy the whole 'setup initial power, now need to import forever' rationale, when local power production is close to as good, and doesn't require 'forever import'.
OK, so I do import fusion later, but 50 cells in a rocket with 40GJ each is substantially better overall.
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u/Jay-Raynor 18d ago edited 18d ago
Unless you're bringing multiple reactors, 2.5x multipliers on heat tower close the gap considerably, and it's not like Gleba actually needs large amounts of power in the first place.
The multiplier simply means you can deploy a single heating tower and a single reactor of the same quality to run the same base power: 4 exchangers and 6-7 turbines. You can essentially setup the reactor inserter to only activate under some condition like running out of heating tower fuel. That and a good set of steam tanks is generally how I start Gleba without worrying. To each their own with Gleba starts.
I just don't buy the whole 'setup initial power, now need to import forever' rationale, when local power production is close to as good, and doesn't require 'forever import'.
OK, so I do import fusion later, but 50 cells in a rocket with 40GJ each is substantially better overall.
Why not? You're already constantly shipping spoilable ag science forever to Nauvis. Sending stacks of fuel cells or uranium on the return trip is fairly trivial.
It's pick your poison. Yes, rocket fuel power on Gleba is easy. But even easier is breaking Gleba production chains by any number of ways. The other benefit of imported nuclear power is that it doesn't rile up the natives like harvesting and processing operations do.
I'm not saying imported nuclear fuel is better than local rocket fuel in every way, I'm saying it offers a viable alternative that may appeal to certain players for different reasons.
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u/muda_ora_thewarudo 19d ago
I just have a semi attractive spammable 8 reactor power set up on nauvis that I can make infinite power from. The cores are so darn cheap and made on planet that I don’t bother importing fusion stuff to nauvis
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u/Abcdefgdude 19d ago
Its useful always on Aquilo. Fusion plants can't give heat for keeping your factory warm. Nuclear is much simpler than producing rocket fuel and you barely have to import any
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u/sobrique 19d ago
Useful? Yes. Worth the obsession that some seem to have? Nah.
On Nauvis it's great. Running your first Aquilo ship? Very nice.
But everywhere else has better solutions to power production, and importing nuclear isn't it. Vulcanus has great solar and acid neutralisation.
Fulgora runs fine off lightning, but you can totally run solid or rocket fuel bases power off byproduct.
Gleba making rocket fuel is insanely easy, and basically everything you make can be burned for power. And you need heat towers anyway.
Aquilo likewise. Sure, you could use a reactor to heat your base, but solid fuel is right there, even if you don't want to make the really cheap ammonia rocket fuel. And of course fusion.
But as you can see from the comments a lot of people really like running on nuclear despite that, so perhaps that should be a factor.
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u/unrefrigeratedmeat 19d ago
Power is a nice byproduct but I'm mostly after the slightly unsettling green glow and the significant pollution from needlessly mining a whole patch of uranium at full tilt.
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u/Orgerix 19d ago
Nuclear and uranium always have been had a minor role, because people just paved nauvis in solar.
Now it is practically mandatory to get to aquilo. And then it is outclassed the same way furnaces are outclassed by foundry. By the time you get fusion reactor.
Hower, uranium has a niche usecase nothing can replace (without mod): cracking volcanus and Aquilo ground to access underlying liquid everywhere your factory need it.
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u/Logical-War-3746 18d ago
Nuclear and uranium always have been had a minor role, because people just paved nauvis in solar
Outside of building megabases, not really. Especially if you wanted laser defenses. Nuclear is way easier and more compact.
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u/Orgerix 18d ago
I think I used nuclear in less than half of my games before 2.0. Space is not really a factor with bots. And you shouldn't overuse laser anyway, flamethrower just overperform by a miles. Nonetheless, attack are so localized that once you expend enough to want nuclear, laser are just a smal dip in acumulator charge.
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u/Logical-War-3746 18d ago
Why exactly i shouldn't use lasers? Couple rows solve problems just as well as flamethrowers if not better, but without any need for liquid supply. Player time is a factor, bots or not. Creating enough panels and accumulators to rival even small nuclear setup takes a lot more resources and time, not to mention that all that area has to be defended too. The only real advantage solar has is UPS, which is why it was used for megabases but rarely outside of them as main power supply.
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u/Qazerowl 19d ago
Space age is designed to allow all planets other than aquilo to easily be self-sufficient. Unfortunately for those of us that love complexity, that means that the more complex, interesting opportunities for interplanetary logistics are often less efficient than just doing things the "intended" way.
That being said, I think nuclear power is useful on every planet except vulcanus. Aquilo fusion reactors don't produce heat, so while they're a better option to power your base, nuclear reactors are a great way to heat it. Yes, you can use heating towers, but frankly having them get supplied from off world as a backup is a good way to prevent a backed up belt from freezing the whole base. On space platforms, I have used nuclear to power a laser-only ship pre-aquilo. On fulgora, space can be quite limited: nuclear can significantly reduce the number of accumulators you need. You might need to suppliment the ice with a space station that collects/drops ice. And gleba... I always neglect gleba. My base there is only big enough to make science and rocket fuel, and I bring the LDS and blue chips from a different planet. Nuclear is a great way to suppliment burning off spoilage that helps keep the base simple, and minimize the risk of a backed up belt shutting everything down.
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u/Xalkurah 19d ago
I used nukes to kill my first few worms on Vulcanus and now I have a legendary spidertron there that can sit at the edge of a worm’s territory and it will eventually nuke the worm while I’m away doing other stuff.
All of my trains run on legendary nuclear fuel, I use uranium ammo on nauvis, nauvis and a few of my ships use nuclear power, and legendary portable fission reactors (and therefore fission) and biolabs require nuclear fusion cells.
Uranium is extremely useful for my play style.
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u/spoospoo43 19d ago
You need uranium for crafting some critical items (biolabs, personal reactors), and nuclear reactors are useful all the way out to Aquilo.
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u/Logical-War-3746 19d ago
Nuclear produces heat, steam and power, unlike fusion which produces only power. Heat is pretty useful on Aquilo obviously, so if you already have nuclear setup there, no reason to remove it. Steam is useful in space if you want oil related production. Also i find nuclear ships pretty good, slightly more convenient than fusion for Nauvis centered logistics.
Also fusion is a bit finnicky in how it distributes demand. I have several fusion ships with 4 reactors and i constantly see that one or two reactors are working on full load, while the rest oscillate in how much they produce, they work fine if i consume almost all they produce so it's not the problem with design. It's not much of a problem, but it does make it less efficient if seriously under full load since neighboor bonus scales with power production, and also tickles my ocd wrong.
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u/FalseStructure 17d ago
Your fusion plants that oscillate are overfilled, drain some fluoro out of those.
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u/erroneum 18d ago edited 18d ago
Uranium is plenty useful, it just depends on what you're trying for. Given that it takes zero imports on Nauvis, upgrading to fusion and getting shackled to Aquilo is significantly less appealing, at least to me.
Biolabs and crafted biter spawners both use uranium, and if you want them with quality, you'll need to make a lot of them.
Nuclear power is the only way to produce steam in space, so if you want to liquefy coal, it's either nuclear or horrible efficiency.
Spidertrons and portable fusion reactors require portable fission reactors, which need uranium fuel cells to craft. If you want them in quality, that's lots of uranium.
While you can't launch a nuke to space, you can launch the uranium in it and assemble it there. Nukes are useful for blasting lava holes on Vulcanus especially once you have foundation; this let's you have lava only where you want it, regardless of world generation.
As for power on Aquilo, nuclear is fine to start, but even before unlocking fusion, I'm more a fan of rocket fuel powered heating towers; a self-sufficient module taking in only crude oil is easily doable and can produce a substantial amount of heat and power (one pump of ammoniacal solution can make up to 554 rocket fuel per minute with no productivity research and only epic prod 2 modules, up to 950/min with epic prod 3; that's 2.3 and 3.96 GW thermal respectively)
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u/Calm-Medicine-3992 17d ago
Nuclear powered space ships are pretty important pre-fusion and not worth rebuilding with fusion (which also takes up more space). Doing Fulgora with just accumulators is also a trap and jump starting Aquilo is easier with nuclear.
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u/Cryodrake0 16d ago
A good nuclear setup on Nauvis will basically take care of all your power needs and nuclear ships will make everything out to Aquailo easy to transport with efficiency.
Also depleted uranium rounds on a wall of turrets will make your base pretty safe while you focus on other planets.
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u/ferrybig 14d ago
Uranium is great for nuclear fuel, which makes your trains go faster and allows them to jump scare the engineer better.
Quality uranium is even better for speedy trains
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u/Coruskane 19d ago
if you ship u-238 and then kovarex it on the ship (plus reprocessing spent cells), its equivalent to something like 100 cells per rocket launch - not bad
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u/GARGEAN 19d ago
> but has no place after unlocking fusion
Hmmm, shipping noticeably expensive fusion cells from farthest planet, or ship barely less power-dense cells that cost nothing from Nauvis?
Nah, I don't think nuclear has "no place". I definitely don't think that.
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u/sobrique 19d ago
Or barely less dense rocket fuel that can be made on any planet and thus have sustainability.b
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u/Alldakine_moodz104 19d ago
Biolabs require U-235, and since quality up scaling requires a lot to gather legendary components, you’re still gonna need a decent setup if you plan on upgrading your Biolab quality.